Have a Coke and a smile.

Monday we went to the park with some friends.
It was sunny and warm but with those pleasant spring
breezes blowing---just the perfect time to be outside.
And since then, it has been hard for your faithful Bell
to get her nose anywhere near the educational grindstone.
I would love to be able to just write off the rest of this
school year and go on picnics everyday and just
read books aloud to the kids and send them outside
with popsicles. No more pencils, no more books, no more
teacher's dirty looks. Sounds like a plan to me.
If only I could...


I ran into a friend yesterday that I used to
do stuff with a lot a couple of years ago. She has
a boy and girl the ages of Lovely K and Big E. She got
burned out on homeschooling and the year before last
put her kids in a private school nearby. She was
selling me hard on this school too, made it sound like
the answer to everything.

And I must confess,
little has appealed to me more
in the last three (almost four) months than
sending my students to school.
Life would be so much easier for me if I didn't have to
deal with the schooling. I could just be a wife and mother
and homemaker. I could spend more time with my
preschooler and my baby and maybe actually get some
housework done.
There might be more order and purpose to our days.

This has just been such a crazy time for me,
since sometime around October.
It started out just a little crazy,
but things continue to happen
to us to make things
crazy and complicated and hard.
I am exhausted in every possible way.
And I don't know what to do to make it simpler or better.
I just feel like holing up inside my home
and cutting myself off from the world,
wearing pajamas all day every day
and just pulling my hair up into a ponytail.
I'm tired of dealing with other people.
I'm tired of the endless list of things
that I am not getting done.
I'm tired of everything.
I'm just tired.

Ever get this way?

I mean, I could honestly just load up in the van and drive off
and just keep on driving and driving and driving.
I know that all this stuff that's going on will pass
and that I'm just in a difficult stage of life....but knowing that
doesn't make it any better when you're just treading water
and wondering how long you can keep it up.
I'm just looking for that fast forward button.

I know it does get better.
After having four kids, I know that you do eventually
feel like your body returns to "normal" and you do
feel rested again. I know it will happen.
I know I won't always be changing diapers
and grading math tests
and stepping on army men on the stairs
and cleaning up from incredibly bloody noses
while the pot boils over
and getting puked on throughout the day
(usually immediately following putting on clean clothes)
and having four people asking me what's for supper
and can they have a snack
and where is their belt
and can we go bowling instead of doing school today
and why haven't I filed 157 papers
and why can't they walk to the mailbox by themselves
and can we never ever take apart the lego ship that they built
and will I come and wipe their bottom?

I think what I want is to just have a little time
where I could actually be left alone.
That's what it is that mother's of young children often want.
Just to be left alone.
Not forever.
But for a while.

And I know that someday
my kids will all be gone and busy with lives of their own
and I will wish I had them back to be under my feet
and constantly talking right in my ear and spilling things
on the floor as soon as I mop it
and getting permanent ink stains on their new clothes
the first time they wear them.
I know I will miss these days.

But not today.